“That is nothing,” replied Alaine; “they are friends. I do not fear them.”
“Ah, that may have been, but nothing is certain since the word has come of intended war,” said Mère Michelle, shaking her head. “Is it not expected that our countrymen from whom we have providentially escaped will descend upon us from Canada? and what may be expected at their hands should they be joined by the Indians? Affairs are in a turmoil. There are grave rumors and it is the hour’s talk.”
“Ah, but Monsieur Leisler, maman, remember him; he is at the head of the people; he stands for the Protestant party. He has assembled the people by beat of drum and has read to them the proclamation of the English William and Mary. You should have heard Pierre telling of it.”
“Pierre! And did I not hear Gerard also tell?”
“He told not so much, but he said that M. Nicholas Bayard and Mayor Van Cortlandt did not uphold M. Leisler. Then cried out Pierre, ‘Me, I am for Leisler,’ and Gerard looked dubious. ‘No wonder,’ cried I, ‘that Pierre is ready to put his trust in one who upholds Protestant faith; engagé that he was, he knows the grip of the irons.’ For a truth, maman, it makes my heart bleed when Mathilde tells me of how Pierre endured that dreadful journey to Guadaloupa, of how he was beaten and abused by the master to whom he was sold, and how it was he who planned the escape of the party of which she became one. Poor Mathilde, her sufferings were great, but his were greater.”
“And she adores Pierre in consequence, of course,” said Mère Michelle, with a grimness unusual to her.
“Yes, as I adore Gerard,” replied Alaine, demurely. “Companions in misery, Pierre and Mathilde, Gerard and I. But dear maman, we suffered little, for it was the good God who gave us you and Papa Louis to lessen our difficulties, and we, though refugees, were never slaves.”
“Since you adore Gerard,” remarked Michelle, “it would be well if you were to pluck me a leaf or two from the garden to season his dinner.”
Alaine needed no second bidding. Down between the rows of garden vegetables she went. If there was anything in which the Huguenots excelled it was in their cultivation of fruit and flowers, and their gardens were miracles of luxuriant growth. Soft-hued peaches sunned their sides on southern slopes, grape-vines showed here and there a purple cluster, for among his greatest treasures carefully brought from the mother country the refugee considered his slips of vines as among the first. Seeds, too, brought from France and carefully tended, brought a harvest of bloom along garden-beds to cheer with their brilliant colors the homesick emigrants. To these Huguenot refugees, more than to any other element, is due the establishing of nurseries and floriculture in America.
Stopping to pick a leaf here, a sprig there, Alaine bent over the garden-beds. From the fields adjoining came the song of the workers. The girl paused a moment to listen, and then ran back to the house to help serve the dinner on broad wooden trenchers, to assist in the clearing away, and then to make ready for her visit to Mathilde.